Five Tips For Making The Most Of Your Social Media Engagement Strategy

When it comes to social media, you have to be very selective in the way you handle content across channels. Be it your Facebook fan page or Instagram Stories, every network has its own niche and way of operation. For example, your Facebook audience will expect more business or product related posts while your Instagram story viewers would love a peek into your workshop, inventory or any behind the scenes footage. Primarily, social media marketing can only work if you do it right or follow the basic rules of activity as well as engagement.

While tools like Buffer or Hootsuite can help you schedule your content on time and across different channels with unique messages, engagement is a completely different venue you need to explore separately. Determine your strategies for social media engagement so that you are able to build a long-term relationship with your audience. In fact, instead of considering social media engagement a one-time conversation, view it as a long-term conversation that helps you build a trustworthy relationship with your audience or potential customers.

Now, to design the ideal social media engagement plan for your crowdfunding campaign, you need to decide on several factors. These would be:

Time: Engagement is time-sensitive. You can’t really stop engaging depending on time of day once you begin. However, unless you have a dedicated team of content creators and managers working behind your social media channels around the clock, you can’t be active all the time. So, selecting a dedicated timeframe for social media engagement is a must.

Channels: Every social media channel works differently, although their purpose remains the same. So, figure out how you’ll be using each channel for engagement. For example, you can use Twitter for resolving customer queries as well as Facebook Messenger.

Tools: Metrics can help you scale any project. By using tools like SproutSocial, you can take a deeper look into the kind of engagement you’ve been doing and which channels perform better than others. Metrics can also tell you when your audience is the most active so you can change your daily engagement schedule.

Now, let’s take a step forward to figure out how to enhance this activity. Increasing your crowdfunding campaign exposure with social media can definitely give you a boost when you use these six strategies:

Initiate conversation with your posts.

When you schedule content to publish on your social media channels, you are most likely to post about your project or the category centered around your current project. In order to draw maximum engagement on your posts, make sure they are actually engaging enough. That means they should ask questions or relate to your audience in some way. For example, if you’ve designed a smart home security solution, you could talk about the recent burglary statistics or ask people if they’ve faced any similar situations before talking about your product. Create posts with questions or relevant industry statistics.

Participate in conversations under trending hashtags.

There are several hashtags trending every day on every social media channel. These are usually day-specific or a certain event-specific (emoji day, moon day, etc.). You can make use of these specific hashtags and engage in conversations trending under them. However, be specific in the threads you join and make sure they are somewhat related to your project theme. You could also create related posts with the hashtag if required. For example, if your project is related to yoga, you could choose the #MondayMotivation hashtag to draw more attention and engagement.

Create your own branded hashtags.

Now, to make the most of your current audience, start creating your own brand hashtag right from the beginning. Twitter is a great platform where you can start generating buzz around your hashtag with Twitter chats. Buffer does this really well. They have been doing Twitter chats for quite some time now with their hashtag #Bufferchats. You can do the same on Instagram and use them in your stories or ask your audience to share their thoughts on your projects with your hashtag for increased engagement.

Dedicate one of your social media channels to customer support.

One of the best ways you can drive more engagement to your social media is by turning it into a major channel for customer support. Since 2016, social media has been considered to be one of the most popular means of customer care. But, you have to make sure your turnaround time is as fast as possible (within one to four hours). It is important to select only one channel for customer care in the beginning so that you are able to handle the queries on time. If you have enough manpower to handle more channels, go for it!

Resolve queries through live videos.

At present, both Instagram and Facebook give you the opportunity to go live with your audience. So, anytime before or even after your launch your campaign, you can simply go live for more engagement. It gives you access to real queries from potential backers instantly and you can go through any previous queries you received from your audience at the same time. The idea is to be vocal about your project and why you chose to do it in the first place.

With these quick tips, you can jumpstart your social media engagement for your campaign right away.